Quick Jabs: Antonio Margarito Takes A Setback; The Klitschkos Take A Beating; BoxRec Takes A Risky Cyber Posture; More

There’s not much more than what’s in the headline, either. The rest: Roger Mayweather’s role in Floyd Mayweather-Manny Pacquiao; the deepening of the deep Juan Manuel Marquez-Juan Diaz II card; Steven Luevano left out in the cold; and Victor Conte’s pickup of another client.

Quick Jabs

Nevada State Athletic Commission, take a bow. The commission turned down disgraced welterweight’s bid to get licensed there today. Now, they didn’t out and out vote “no,” per se. They voted to table the request 4-1, which actually was fairly generous of them to Margarito, since an up or down vote that ended in a “no” would have prevented Margarito from returning for a year. The idea was that the commission thought Margarito should return to California, the place where his license was stripped last year after the commission there determined he had loaded his gloves prior to his fight with Shane Mosley. Which, obviously, he should. Margarito’s team said they hadn’t done so because a Margarito lawsuit against the commission stood to bias their decision, a remark that could come back to bite promoter Bob Arum sooner or later in the Mayweather-Pacquiao negotiations, something we’ll get to in a minute. Naturally, Arum had nothing nice to say after the decision, calling it “gutless” that there was no up or down vote, apparently not capable of thinking more than one second in the future, or else he’d realize the commission probably did him a favor…

Arum says the potential hold-up for a welterweight clash between Mayweather and Pacquiao could be that Mayweather’s uncle/trainer Roger might be going to jail for assaulting a woman. Of course, he cites no real evidence of this. Multiple news outlets have reported that the Pacquiao lawsuit against Mayweather and his promoter Golden Boy is the real issue. If Arum’s unsubstantiated hunch turns out to be true, I honestly think Floyd should go forward with the fight anyway, potentially using his dad instead, because if Floyd waited to take fights based on whether his uncle might be in jail at any given point, he’d have a career perpetually on hold…

Some in the media have bashed HBO over sports prez Ross Greenburg’s remarks about being “out of the heavyweight division” due to lack of U.S. interest, unless HBO can make a fight between one of the Klitschko brothers and David Haye or Tomasz Adamek — a decision that led them to pass on Wladimir Klitschko-Alexander Povetkin. I can’t say I get the argument against Greenburg on this one. Does anyone think Klitschko-Povetkin would do great ratings, even though Klitschko’s championship would be on the line against a top-5 contender? You can question HBO on a lot of their programming decisions, but I think they’re right that we in the United States aren’t big on the Klitschko bros. overall. Potentially bad ratings haven’t always stopped HBO from buying fights, but they usually take criticism for those decisions, so what’s the problem when they get it right? Nonetheless, HBO PR man Ray Stallone released a statement from Greenburg to “clarify” HBO’s view. Here it is:

“Our position is very clear. We remain opportunistic with the heavyweight division. Though we have no heavyweight fights on the fall schedule, we will continue to consider proposed matchups. So far this year we have televised [Chris] Arreola vs. Adamek, which took place on April 24. Boxing is a very fluid sport and we will continue to review heavyweight fights that are presented to us by promoters.”

OK. Being open-minded is a good thing, I suppose. But if HBO is going to spend money, I’d prefer they spend it on better fights than Klitschko-Povetkin. I’ll watch Klitschko-Povetkin one way or the other, but I’ll hate myself in the morning. P.S. Here’s the piddly-ass reason Klitschko-Haye didn’t happen. Haye is fast becoming one of the handful of most loathsome figures in boxing…

The pay-per-view card headlined between the lightweight rematch between divisional champion Marquez and Diaz was already about as deep as any card in a long time, and it keeps getting deeper. Sakio Bika-Jean Paul Mendy, an eliminator for the super middleweight belt held by Lucian Bute, will be on the card, and it might air for free on the pay-per-view channel hosting the card. Also, British super middleweight prospect, whom TQBR contributor Andrew Harrison said good things about here, will fight on the card…

BALCO’s Victor Conte, who did some time in jail related to his work with performance-enhancing drugs, has signed up another client, junior bantamweight Nonito Donaire. Some might be willing to forgive and forget Conte, but I’m not so quick. He did his time, sure, and should be allowed to move on. But I don’t think someone who helped professional athletes cheat should be getting a second chance to help professional athletes in any capacity on nutrition and vitamins and what not. It’s like someone who gets sent to jail for bilking bank customers somehow getting a job at a bank after he gets out of jail. It wouldn’t happen…

What’s with boxing websites and bad cyber hygiene? The other day, I was on BoxRec, and my computer warned me that browsing the site could lead to my computer receiving malware. I asked some folk about whether they’d received similar warnings, and several said yes. Just when I’d lifted my ban on linking to BoxingScene because my computer hasn’t gotten anything funky from it for a while, along comes the likewise indispensable BoxRec with some virus-y, spyware-y business. I won’t link to them again for a while…

Arum has dumped featherweight Steven Luevano, despite Luevano’s manager Cameron Dunkin saying that Top Rank had promised to look out for Luevano after the Juan Manuel Lopez fight, win or lose. It almost doesn’t warrant a mention here anymore that Arum would (allegedly) go back on his word, but I feel compelled to point it out each time.

About Tim Starks

Tim is the founder of The Queensberry Rules and co-founder of The Transnational Boxing Rankings Board (http://www.tbrb.org). He lives in Washington, D.C. He has written for the Guardian, Economist, New Republic, Chicago Tribune and more.

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